Blood And Oil, Part Two

It may be wise if, going forward, you think of the ongoing Blood & Oil series as something which needs to slow roast; the strip will be here, but the RSS feed will be your best friend regarding updates to the site. Once again: Blood & Oil is an Automata story written by Gary Whitta and powerfully realized by Ben Caldwell. It’s in five parts, running all this week and into next Monday. Buckle up.

My psyche is always so abraded by the social onslaught of a convention - I’m not entirely certain we’re built to see this many faces in that span of time. I feel like someone has been using my skull as a makeshift pipe to smoke cacti hallucinogens. There is a resin baked into its inner surface that is in deep communion with my consciousness, they are synonyms, and I think the timescale is wrong because I’m currently watching reality being birthed and destroyed at once, and it’s beautiful whenever it is not a greasily unfolding nightmare bouquet.

It is very strange to be at San Diego Comic Con beneath a banner which says “Webcomics,” considering that this word did not exist when we began our .jpeg foundry. There are so many creators whose work occupies this space - enough for there to be space designated! - and the lanes so choked with humanity that I once saw a jedi fall before our booth, instantly pulverized by the crowd.

Only his saber remained.

I’m not familiar enough with Gay fiction or Furry fiction to know that they are often a package deal, and I told the guys at Sofawolf Press that I would be back to buy something, and never got the opportunity. I don’t like doing that, and I feel bad. For whatever reason, I think it’s my duty to look at things I don’t like (or think I will like) and to think about things I wouldn’t in the normal course of the day - and gay, bipedal foxes having sex in a castle is about as far away from my own thoughts as it is possible to get. This isn’t one of those situations where it’s like “oh, gay furry porn, what’s this horf horf horf” and then I get on the fursuit with the dog balls and I’m scritching away. I literally can’t hold an image like that in my head, which is a failure of my imagination. That’s why I have this regimen in the first Goddamned place.

I had multiple opportunities to see one R. K. Milholland, because he was a hundred feet away. His strip Something Positive is one of the old guard, which makes us even older guard than that, which is a fucked thing to consider. As I was running away from the convention center to seize a taxi, he thanked me for some ancient kindness I had paid him; I demurred. I don’t really go in for that kind of stuff. Where would I keep such a sentiment? There is no room. If he had not been dedicated, and broken, but broken properly, lucky, and above all excellent, linking to him in his formative state would have been irrelevant. A nickel arcing into his guitar case at best. I read his work and felt kinship immediately. If I did anything it was merely to recognize our shared humanity, which is something that everyone should be doing, every day, and at all times.